Here’s why Tool hasn’t released an album in almost a decade

Remember late last year when Reverb listed a long-awaited new album from Tool as one of the most anticipated rock albums of 2014? Well, now it’s a little more shaky on whether or not the world will see a new album this year — even after fans have been itching for new material for eight years.

“The fans are pissed at us,” said guitarist Adam Jones. “And while part of me is selfish and goes, ‘I’m not necessarily doing it for them,’ it’s time that they understand what’s going on.”

The band’s last album was “10,000 Days,” released in 2006. Apart from the typical inter-band drama, stress and musical writers’ block that comes with being together for nearly 25 years, the band is plagued with a Kafkaesque legal battle on multiple fronts.

A friend of Jones’ sued the band in 2007, saying artwork was used that he didn’t get credit for. Things escalated from there when an insurance company meant to keep Tool protected against such lawsuits announced they were also suing them, “over technicalities.” They’re bogged down with the case, which is scheduled for trial in January.

“The whole thing is really depressing,” drummer Danny Carey said. “The bad thing is it’s really time consuming … To throw this in the mix, it makes everything that much worse and stresses people out.”

Jones added: “And it’s costing millions and millions and millions of dollars to defend us.” And the fans are all going, ‘We want a new Tool album. What the fuck?’ But the point is, we’re fighting the good fight. We’re going to trial and we want to crush them.”

Despite the headaches outside the music, Carey said they’ve been piecing together songs to send to frontman Maynard Keenan, saying they’ve got one 10-minute song “pretty much done.”

As if that wasn’t enough of a tease, he said, “I’m hoping that we have something really solid recorded by the end of the year, but we’ll see how it goes. I thought that last year too.”

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James Garcia is a community reporter at the Loveland Reporter-Herald and a new blogger at Reverb. Follow him on Twitter @JamesGarciaRH.